„Părintele vitreg” – un străin de iure (sau de facto)?
The “step-parent” - a de iure (or de facto) alien?

Summary/Abstract: The “step-parent”, namely the husband or, as the case, the consensual partner of a child's parent, is an almost irrelevant character from a juridical perspective. The Civil Law grants them a series of facilities in the adoption field and also sets the possibility, circumstantially, to constrain the parent's husband/wife to continue the minor's maintenance; nevertheless, these are seclusive stipulations, unable to define the place, the role of the "step-parent". The author brings into attention the marital/nonmarital companion of the parent in two significantly different hypostases: as an aspirant to the "title" of a fully-fledged parent (through adoption); as an "additional" person in the context of joint exercise of parental authority by the child's father and mother. In the author's opinion, there are situations in which the effective and affective presence of the "step-parent" in the child's everyday life, its direct participation in the growth, maintenance, and supervision of the child is, regrettably, impossible to consolidate through a legal formula. The possibility of adopting the child by the adoptive parent's consensual partner can be understood as the beginning of another approach, but adoption is still completely inaccessible to the consensual partner of the natural parent. Regarding the exercise of parental authority within the "recomposed" family, the author believes that the French model of "delegation-sharing" exercise of parental attributions should be followed by the Romanian legislator. Through this mechanism, which does not alter the algorithm of joint exercise of parental authority by the parents of the child, for current acts relating to the child, the husband/wife of the parent, eventually the unmarried parent's consensual partner, would benefit towards third parties by the presumption of parental consent.

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